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| Making A Haunted House | Theory on Plots | Halloween Home |
| Halloween '00 | Halloween '01 |
My haunted house has, for the past 3 years, consisted of roughly 6 rooms. Each year there have been major changes in the layout, to confuse or surprise people who have been through it the previous year. I can't say anything about the one for this upcoming halloween, because some people that I invite every year know this site's address and seeing them screaming is what I live for.
Two Halloweens ago, the one in '99, it was my first time I had built a walk-through haunted house. It was also the first time I actuly tried to scare my friends. So there was almost no way that it would be bad.
I always start the thing with an orientation room of sorts. That's where I lay down the rules and build up the tension. Every year it's the same thing except it has a different exit leading into the first scary room. When I say "build up the tension," I mean like having some of my friends (who are working in the haunted house) bang loudly on doors or groad or something. You'd be surprized how well this scares people. My rules are always: No running, no passing the tour guide (me) unless I ask you to, if you don't touch the monsters they won't touch you, and scream a lot; it gives the monsters motivation.
In '99, the next room was the pool table room, but you could barely tell there was a pool table because it was draped with a black sheet and a coffin was on top of it. One of the neat little setups was that there was one of those animated hands sticking out of the coffin, wiggling. In the far left corner there was a double chair with obviously a real person sitting it it. The person was wearing a mask and held an axe and was completely motionless except their legs, which were swinging back and fourth slowly. There was a red strobe light blinking slowly, too. So I would lead the victims around the pool table and try to convince them to pass the man in the chair. He never made any sudden movements or anything, but the people just WOULD NOT pass him. I remember one group of three took about 5 minutes of convincing until they slowly passed him. Now that they were on the other side of the pool table, I'd ask them to take a look under it. Now there was only one spot to do this, as I had placed plywood on all the other sides. Oh I forgot to mention that there was a second tour guide who worked with me. Once we got them to crouch down and look under the table, they'd see that there were two motionless bodies under there. Then the other tour guide would crouch down, say some keyword, and then the body nearest him would spring to life and grab him. He'd be pulled under the table and out of sight, then his "hand" would reach out and he would cry for help. I'd grab his hand and pull it out, which turned out to be a fake ripped off arm. In the strobe light it looked real and was extremely convincing. After "realizing" that the arm was missing a body, I'd yelp and throw it at the victims. I remember a person from one group I had down there accidently caught the arm, not realizing what it was, looked at it and screamed at the top of her lungs, then threw it behind her.
After the arm, things would die down and I'd get up and say something like "forget about him let's get outta here," and then lead the people down the other side of the table. As we approached the door to the right of us, I'd turn around and point with some constipated scared look on my face. Turns out that it's the man with the swinging legs running at us with his axe swinging. I quickly open the door and let the scared people push in. The guy would bang on the door for a little while, and then I'd have to wait for the victims to stop screaming. The bathroom was small, with a white strobe going and the shower curtains closed. Not many people noticed that, though, until I asked them to open them. Not one person agreed to my proposal, so I whipped them open myself to reveal Mike Myers (from halloween, not austin powers) with a knife raised. It looked amazingly real and almost like it was moving in the strobe light. Some screamed and some just tried to hide behind me or their partner. With the curtain closed again, We'd move into the bedroom (MY bedroom). This room was dimly lit with a black light. Right infront on us would be my bed, with the guy from scream in it. The only way to go was left and out through the main bedroom door. A few groups were convinced that the scream guy was living, but he was really just pillows under the sheets and a mask with a manaquin head in it. We'd slowly inch past the bed, closing the gap between us and the door. But then, from behind the bed, a person in an alien mask would jump out and move towards us. Again, I'd opent the door for the scared people and quickly shut it.
The 2nd to last room was barely a room. There was a coffin on the ground with a hooded man in it. The object was to safely walk past him. Naturally, he had to jump out at the people just when they thought they were past him, and he did, and then we would enter the final room.
The last room was the room with the fireplace in the picture on the Halloween Home page. In the dark area that the bottom of that picture was a table instead of a couch, and there would be a man on it in a mask that looked a little like frankenstein with more stitches. The same "dead" hooded guy from the last room would appear on the other end of this room, "tighten" the restraints on the man on the table, "throw a switch", and a strobe light would start. When the light went on, the man on the table would violently shake, as if he was being electricuted. The strobe would then go off and the man would lay motionless. Then I would say something like "oh he's dead, cmon let's go" and walk past the table to the exit. When the guests would walk by him, though, he's jump up with his last ounce of life and fall off the table, trying to grab them. We would quickly move out of that room and back into the orientation room, but as soon as we got there, the hooded man would come from under a curtain on the left and the man with the axe would come from the right and scare the guests up the stairs and out of harm's way.
That was a blast to build as much as it was to actully operate. All the guys that helped me out in it cooperated really well, did what they were supposed to, and only messed up once. LOL, actully I have to tell you about that. We were at the part where the 2nd tour guide would be pulled under the table. The second guide's name was Brian. Anyway, Brian was crouched over the monster that would grab him and said the keyword. Nothing happened for about 3 seconds, so Brian, in fear of revealing the keyword or anything, just kinda moved his head closer to the monster and said some improv. like "yeah pretty spooky" or something. Still no response from the monster. We waited tehre for about 5 more seconds and then I just yelled "JAMIE!" (the guy who was the monster). He looked up at us through the mask and then said "oh" and took off the mask, spoiling whatever could have been rescued from the scene. He then said "I quit" for no reason and we just walked away. The man with the swinging legs never was cued because he was laughing so hard, and we just had to move on.
During that same tour, we exited the bedroom and the moment everyone entered the next room, this one divider curtain just mysteriously fell down, revealing the last room and the orientation room. At that point, I just said forget about it and got all the monsters together and we ended on that (it was the last tour of the day anyway).
But as I was saying, most of the time everything went as planned, and everyone was attentive and willing to do their job, but still keeping an open mind and actully made it better. (The swinging legs was made up by the guy who did it at the last minute; it turned out to be the highlight of the whole thing). I learned quite a lot from that Halloween, too. Like to always give the monsters that will be close to the action my own shoes so the guests don't identify them. (that actully happened). I also learned some more important things, such as to always keep an eye on the cast; one time one of them put a dummy's hand down it's pants, so it was feeling itself the whole time! But seriously, I DID learn some things and was really excited about the next year.